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THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 



AJS" ADDEESS 



BELIVEREB BY 



Hon. D. W. VOORHEES, 



O IF I IINT 3D I .£l 3ST ^ , 



BEFORE THE LITERARY SOCIETIES 



OF THE 



WY^?. A ^^?jL*.. ^,Jf <Mt?.^ \.t ^.t 



July 4tk, I860. 



TEKBE HAUTE, IND. 

n. H. SIMPSO N A CO., Printers. 

1860. 



CORRESPONDENCE 



University of Virginia, V 

Charlottesville, July bih, 1860. j 
Hon. D. W. Voorhees: 

Dear Sir — Believing that a wider circulation of your oration delivered 
before the Literary Societies of the University on yesterday, will serve to 
increase the great pleasure experienced by your audience and give a still 
further circulation to sentiments, \yhich, while they challenged an enthu- 
siastic approval from your hearers, have a peculiar value and appropri- 
ateness in the present aspect of our country, we request a copy for imme- 
diate publication. 

Hoping that you may see fit to comply with our request, at your earliest 
convenience, we are with sentiments of the highest regard, 
Your obedient servants, 



E. HOLMES BOYD, 
J. McD. CARRINGTON, 
WOOD BOULDIN, 
E. C. ANDERSON, Jr., 
R. M. VENABLE, 


Committee 
[- of the 
j Jefferson Society, 


WILLIAM ALLEN, 
ALEX. B. COCHRAN, 
LEIGH ROBINSON, 
DOUGLAS F. FORREST, 
WILLIAM NORWOOD, 


Committee 
[ of the 
| Wash' ton Society 



Terre Haute, Ind., July 13th, 1860. 

Gentlemen — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor 
of the 5th inst. 

Yielding to your wishes as therein expressed, I will furnish without 
delay a copy of my address for publication. 

I tender you my grateful thanks for the manner in which you see proper 
to allude to its supposed merits. I trust at least that its sentiments wiH 
not be found at variance with an enlightened and patriotic view of the 
true relation which the American citizen sustains towards the Federal and 
State governments. I trust also that it will in some measure commend 
itself to those who have studied impartially the history and character of 
the exalted race to which we belong, and the relation which different races 
have borne towards each other in every civilized age of the world. 

Permit me to embrace this opportunity to express to you and through 
you to the Societies whom you represent, my deep and lasting sense of the 
kind and very flattering reception with which I was honored while at the 
University. Very truly, ycur obedient servant, 

D. W. VOORHEES. 

E. Holmes Boyd, William Allen, and others. 



THE AMERICAN CITIZEN. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

We stand to-day in an august and venerable presence. 
The associations by which we are surrounded are connec- 
ted with a great and unparallelled age. The scenes on 
which our eyes rest call up before the mind with vivid 
power, the early and the exalted days of the Eepublic, 
The soil on which we tread teems with classic memo- 
ries. The sky that bends above us is the same that once 
drew the gaze of the philosophers of American liberty 
and American science. The barren mountains that sleep 
off yonder in the dim blue distance are fruitful and lux- 
uriant in the bright and beautiful historical pictures 
which the youths of America, whether they be dwellers 
•on the Aroostook or the Mississippi, have treasured away 
in their lessons taught by the wintry fireside. The rivers 
that encircle the eastern slope of a mighty continent, 
and that roll away from these plains to the ocean, mur- 
mur a song of everlasting praise to the deeds of immor- 
tal renown which were once enacted on their shores. 
All around us- breathes the fame of grand and wonderful 
achievements. The very air is redolent of the rich odors 
of a short, though felicitous, blessed antiquity. 

"We turn our faces around towards the past. We look 
along down the fleeting years of little more than an ordi- 
nary lifetime, and we see the young and struggling institu- 
tions of our country arise from chaos and civil conflict. — 
The birthplace of distinguished merit, of genius — of him 
who serves his country and his race in an eminent ca- 
pacity, has ever been the theme of faithful commemora- 
tion. But what shall be said of the spot where the prin- 
ciples of a great free government were born — where the 
throes of constitutional liberty were first felt in a definite 
form — where the volcanic ideas were first engendered, 
which tore as by a mighty eruption, an ancient monarchy 



in twain, and made the dissevered fragment overshadow 
the colossal proportions of the parent trunk? We 
ponder over our answer in awe-struck silence, for we 
are in and about that place. The ground whereon we 
tread is holy, and the burning bush from which was 
spoken the independence of the American people, is 
blazing in full view of us from where we stand. These 
walls are full of a strange, touching eloquenee. Free- 
dom of action, freedom of thought, and a generous love 
of science ' and letters, constituted the trinity at whose 
shrine the illustrious patron of this Institution paid his 
devotions. The spirit of a regenerated, progressive era 
in the history of mankind is here. It becomes us, 
therefore, to gather in upon our minds the elements of the 
moral, political and philosophic world which surround us. 
And as for me, I bow with reverence before the genius 
of the place and the hour, and acknowledge with profound 
sensibility the honor that attaches to theposition in which 
I stand. 

But not only the wonderful and gigantic proportions of 
the past arise at this hour, like the shadowy, though 
splendid creation of some fabled enchanter : The pres- 
ent — the living, breathing present, with its arteries of 
action interlacing the globe; with its pulses of life beating 
high and bounding with an irresistible energy; its 
great heart throbbing beneath the weight of the des- 
tiny of the human race; it too, is here and demands the 
recognition of practical minds. We may not ignore it. 
It is the lineal descendant and legitimate offspring of 
those days wherein the arts of war and peace first assumed 
to act for American interests, guided by American valor 
and wisdom. 

The importance of the present epoch in the history of the 
world, is however simply the importance which attaches to 
the condition and probable destiny of that universal hero of 
all earthly dramas, — man himself. I propose to-day to 
discuss him in one of his present and most important re- 
lations to the age in which we live, to God and to the hu- 



man race, — as The American Citizen. And though I come 
herefrom a young and distant state, a province, as it 
were, of Eome in her ancient days; peopled but yester- 
day by the progressive spirit of the race and the age to 
which we belong, yet the bond of our citizenship is a 
joint inheritance and links us together in a firm and 
fraternal alliance. I come to you with the grand hailing 
sign, not of distress, not of peril and disaster, not of shud- 
dering, affrighted and appalled extremity, but of liberty, 
of peace, of glory and of hope: I too. am an American 
Citizen. 

It is not merely, however, for the purpose of calling 
to mind the lustre which attaches throughout the earth 
to the idea of American citizenship, that I have chosen 
that theme on this occasion. It is true, that everywhere 
beneath the sun, on the high seas and in the midst of 
the desert, wherever the insatiate thirst for knowledge, 
or gain, has lured the children of civilization, the magic 
power of the American name is never invoked in vain. — 
It is true, that wherever the human heart, galled by 
tyranny, feels the faintest aspiration for freedom, there 
the image of our laws and our civil polity appears as a 
heavenly visitant. It is true that the .Roman, when sink- 
ing beneath the scourge, made his appeal for relief and pro- 
tection to a government unequal to that which, havingher 
seat of empire here in the west, reaches forth her hands 
to the uttermost parts of the earth to protect the humblest 
citizen that ever reposed on her bosom. All this is true, and 
the patriotic heart fondly dwells on these rich and fasci- 
nating evidences of national renown. And like the care- 
worn and heavily burthened traveler who turns aside 
from the wearisome highway, and revels for a season 
amidst seductive groves, refreshing fountains and shaded 
lawns, so might we dispose of weighty and serious thoughts, 
and give ourselves to exultation and honest pride over 
the political, physical, moral and mental greatness of the 
land we inhabit. But the times we live in, the scenes 
by which we are surrounded are mixod with gloom as 



8 

well as glory. The precise moment of time to-day whieb 
we occupy, is too fearfolly fraught, too ominously 
filled with grave, grand and terrible interests to the 
American people, and indeed to the friends of liberty 
throughout the world, to admit of anything but a severe 
and candid scrutiny into the solemn duties as well as the 
priveliges, the imposing responsibilities as well as the 
pleasures of the American citizen. The hour draws nigh 
in which the pure and lofty love of country, for which our 
fathers were famed r will be in anxious demand. The 
American citken in Iris full and proper developement 
and moving in the grand sphere which the Constitution 
marks out for him, is equal to the high mission where- 
unto he is called: the perpetuation of liberty, regulated 
bylaw. Let us look briefly at the nature of the trust re- 
posed in his hands. 

Government is a social necessity. While each suc- 
cessive generation of mankind has acknowledged and acted 
on this fact, yet every people and every age have had 
their distinctive principles as the basis of the institutions 
by which they were governed, The history of human 
government is one over which the student and the phil- 
osophic statesman ponder long and wonder much. Since 
the world began, all the powers of man, good as well as 
evil, have been concentrated on the stupendous problem of 
governing himself and his fellow-men. He was born in a 
paradise, and another of celestial splendor and eternal 
duration awaits him, if he shall happily pass the mystie 
river that flows between the two worlds, that were given 
to him from the beginning. He is the bright, supreme 
intelligence of this beautiful sphere, — he is linked to end- 
less ages by the immortality of mind, and is allied to Deity 
by the divine origin and destiny of the soul. He is the 
master-piece of the handiwork of Him who conceived the 
flaming sun when all was dark, and bade it shine a full 
realization of his conceptions, — who measured the just 
proportions and laid the architrave of hemispheres and 
continents before matter had emerged from chaos, — who 
bade the imperial ocean seek itsbed, who reared the mo-un- 



tain and sunk the valley, and put all nature tinder the 
supremacy, not of chance, blind as fate, but of Order, the 
vicegerent of Jehovah on earth. Such is man, such 
the source whence he came, and such is the destiny that 
awaits him. ~No wonder that his Government has engaged 
not only the deep and protracted solicitude of himself, but 
even also of the Author of his being, who promulgated 
that great code of laws in the midst of the lightnings on 
Sinai, which have withstood all revolutions, and have 
neither been repealed, nor amended, nor loosened from 
the pedestal of majestic authority on which they rest. 

But even the strong hand and paternal reasoning of God 
himself could not prevent from arising in the breasts of 
his own people, a desire for change in the institutions 
which governed them, and which they knew to be of divine 
ordainment. All subsequent time, all subsequent human 
experience, has been a reiteration of the principle of rest- 
less discontent which caused Israel to murmur against the 
constitution and laws of the fathers, and demand a king. 
Not that I mean here to state, that the tendency of the 
race, when acting under enlightened impulses, is towards 
despotism or the government of a single sceptered hand, 
but that revolution has been the order of the world. — 
Change has always been the desire of man's heart. He 
has never ceased to recognize the imperious necessity of 
government, but its forms have been as changing and 
diversified as the capricious movements of a dream. He 
who tells you that stability has ever been attained in the 
principles or the practice of any government hitherto 
established by the children of men, or indeed that perma- 
nence has ever marked any of the works of human hands, 
has read the history of his race in vain. It is not so : 
and I allude to the fact to show that struggling systems of 
political institutions have forever been jarring against each 
other, have alternately triumphed and alternately fallen, 
have forever been engaged in conflict, whether at the 
Eed Sea or at Marathon, whether at Thermopylae or at 
Yorktown. This fact which comes down to us with all the 
sanction of universal history, commends itself with over- 



10 



whelming force to the American citizen who fondly imag- 
ines that to his government has been issued the sublime 
edict, esto perpetua ! May it be so. May the broken col- 
umn and desecrated temple never mark the downfall of 
American freedom. But the murky gloom of the political 
heavens, the angry ocean of human passion which now 
imperils the landmarks of the Constitution; the voice of 
hoarse sedition which, like the boding cry of birds of ill 
omen, now fills the land , the harsh sounds of unnatural, 
fratricidal strife between the tribes of ooe covenant, — all 
admonish us that the hour for idle wishes and vain entrea- 
ties addressed to some imaginary genius of concord, has 
passed away, and that action, bold, honest and patriotic 
action on the part of the citizen, can alone guarantee a 
long lease of life to the present form of the American gov- 
ernment. 

This universal instability in the political institutions of 
men has stamped history with its striking diversity. — 
Mental ingenuity and mental power have examined, 
grasped, adopted, and discarded every theory, built on 
every basis, and in turn, destroyed their own creations. — 
In the vast and complicated annals of the past we behold 
all the multiplied forms in which human government has 
been attempted. But in all its thousand shapes there have 
been but two contending principles in behalf of which men 
have enlisted their minds in council and their arms in 
action. The unlawful assumption of power by those who 
hold authority, has been waging an unbroken contest with 
the rightful sovereignty of political institutions from the 
earliest dawn of history to the present time. Liberty and 
despotism have been the two great opposing forces which 
have convulsed the world, torn down old systems and 
planted new ones, and marked the world's highway of 
progress with fields of battle. Their struggles for the su- 
premacy have never ceased. It is in the heart of man to 
grasp at power. Dominion is sweet, and the earth and the 
sea with all that in them dwell have not sufficed in their 
subserviency to fill the measure of man's ambition to gov- 



11 



era. Alexander the Macedonian, following the gilded 
meteor of conquest through all the domain of the East, and 
at last pausing upon the Indus to weep, because the limits 
of the earth were smaller than the boundaries of his impe- 
rial desires, was simply the illustration and type of that 
love of power which is inherent in the human heart. A 
crown with its jewels, a sceptre, and the robes of royalty, 
have never failed to lure the daring mind, unchastened 
by the love of legal liberty, to tempt the dangerous heights 
of sole supremacy. But on the other hand, resistance to 
the power of one over many, to the spirit of royal domina- 
tion, and to the absorbing prerogatiyes of kingly rule, has 
been obstinato, fierce and perpetual. The love of power 
is shared by all alike, and the laboring millions of a gov- 
ernment cherish it as clearly as he who wears away his 
days, and consumes his nights in feverish longings after 
the fleeting emblems of temporal greatness. Freedom 
from the impositions and restraints of one supreme will 
has been the wholesome object sought in almost every 
popular revolution in which mankind ever engaged. We 
may exhaust ourselves in the exploration of past ages; we 
may travel back beyond the area of Christ, and ascend 
still higher up the stream of time beyond the flood, and 
there by the dim, mysterious twilight of oriental history, 
scan the traces of ancient conflicts ; we may take our stand 
at a period two thousand years ago, and with the clear 
light of a high civilization streaming around us, contem- 
plate the contending parties of Greece — Athens, with her 
democracy and her aristocracy, in a perpetual struggle 
with varied results, and Sparta torn by rival parties ; we 
may turn and survey Eome in the days of her greatness, 
when she was the full perfection of a political power, with 
her Gracchi and Tribunes of the people arrayed in high 
and fierce contest with the advocates of royalty and cen- 
tralized power; we may sadly watch the expiring agonies 
of Eoman liberty, and behold Brutus slay Caesar at the 
base of Pompey's statue in a mad attempt to reinstate the 
fallen fortunes of the republic ; we may then leave the 



12 

banks of the yellow Tiber, as did the genius of liberty 
veiled and mourning, and cross over the dark ages, the 
gulf in which centuries lie buried ; we may take our stand 
at Eunnymede, and witness Magna Charta wrenched from 
the unwilling hand of the tyranical and perfidious John ; 
we may stand on the soil of France and shrink aghast and 
horror-struck from the gory memories which arise on 
every hand as awful witnesses of the bloody baptism which 
that nation underwent in the Reign of Terror; we may 
call to mind the Dutch Republic, heroic and glorious little 
Holland, maintaining, in the midst of strife within, and of 
European despotism without her borders, a free govern- 
ment more than two hundred years ago: we may appeal 
to all nations, to the living and the dead, wherever the sun 
has looked down on a people enlivened by a sense of their 
rights, and we find the same opposing principles, the same 
elements at war, the same parties in contest, liberty forever 
lifting its bright and radiant crest against the haughty 
pretensions of defiant despotism. 

But the success of freedom as a practical and substantial 
fact, as an acknowledged and palpable measure for the 
promotion of human happiness has only been achieved by 
one distinct race of the human family. Free Government, 
occupying the wholesome medium ground between anar- 
chy and the licentious violence of the unrestrained popu- 
lace on the one hand, and rigid tyranny on the other, 
has been aimed at and sought after, but never fully at- 
tained until the Anglo Saxon race laid its hand on the des- 
tinies of the world, and became the champion of liberalized 
civilization. Plato it is tru e, dreamed of his perfect Govern- 
ment. Utopia arose as a vision of primeval purity, peace and 
order. He saw men moving among their fellows in obedi- 
ence solely to the higher attributes of our nature, and ut- 
terly insensible to the passions which thirst for pleasure 
and power. He witnessed the elevating and sacred pre- 
cepts of his almost divine philosophy reduced 10 daily 
practice, by the citizens of this fanciful Republic. Law 
and liberty moved in exquisite harmony, and no jarring 
sounds were heard to issue from the various spheres of well 



13 

regulated action. But all this was simply the beautiful 
creation of a Philosopher's genius. He, alone, beheld it, 
and that with the far reachingglance of inspiration. The 
world never saw anything of the kind. The great tide of 
action and busy life, has rushed on in its fierce headlong 
course, guided by no system of such beneficence as was 
displayed to the view of the Grecian Sage. But, after the 
world had experimented and failed — after Philosophers 
had dreamed their dreams, and awakened to find them 
vanished, a new 'and mighty race gradually emerged from 
the rude condition of nature, and gradually became the 
patron of science, the friend of letters, the nurse of Chris- 
tianity, and the defender of constitutional freedom. To 
that race, the American citizen belongs, and his time may be 
usefully employed, and his attention profitably engaged 
for a brief space, in contemplating its history and its pow- 
erful characteristics. 

I hold nothing in common with that false and pernicious 
system of political ethics, which proclaims as its favorite 
dogma, the unqualified equality of the whole human fami- 
ly. The social fabric, wherever it has been reared, has 
always had its virulent and determined enemies, seeking 
under the specious guise of good, to implant evil in its 
Constitution, and to undermine and drag down the pillars 
cf its virtue and wisdom. Our age and our nation can 
claim no exemption from this class of destroyers. Seizing 
upon some isolated expression of the founders of our Gov- 
ernment, and perverting it totally from its original appli- 
cation, losing sight of, or studiously misrepresenting the 
circumstances under which it was originally uttered, we 
see men in our midst, forgetful of the proud lineage of the 
American citizen, and seeking to debase and tarnish the 
armorial bearings of the great race to which ho belongs, 
advance the doctrine and urge the theory of absolute hu- 
man equality. It is time that the great minds that dressed 
naked liberty in the habiliments of the American Consti- 
tution and confided her to the care and sleepless vigilance 
of the Anglo Saxon race on this continent, should be vin- 
dicated from the odium which would justly attach to their 



14 

memoiies if they had denied the superiority of the race 
for whom they made this Government. 

Abstract equality is visible in none of the works of 
God. Inanimate creation preseuts an endless variety. — ■ 
One star differeth from another star in glory. The Hea- 
vens that declare the glory of God and the Firmament that 
showeth His handiwork, display to the eye of the Astrono- 
mer, planets, spheres, orbs and worlds, scattered in mar- 
vellous and prolific profusion through their azure fields 
and awful depths, but an individuality marks each from 
the other — fiery Mars and lovely Yenus, ringed Saturn 
and majestic Jupiter, Arc-turns, Orion and the Pleiades 
with their ''sweet influences," have each and all their sep- 
arate, distinguishing characteristics. The broad face of 
the great globe, on wdich we stand, presents also one vast 
panoramic view of change, diversity, inequality. Our 
minds grow dizzy in the attempt to grasp an idea of that 
Omnipotence, capable of producing a measureless universe, 
and yet with detailed accuracy, creating no two things of 
exact equality. The traveller who has been the pilgrim of 
every land, and whose adventurous foot has touched every 
shore, who has traversed every plain, scaled every moun- 
tain, crossed every river, navigated every sea and ocean, has 
been lured from spot to spot, and from clime to clime, be- 
cause new scenes break upon his vision at every step, be- 
cause each object he beholds has its novelty, though he 
may have gazed upon thousands of its species before. 

Animal life is full of the same wonderful lesson; but 
the most striking feature of the grand system of inequali- 
ty designed and accomplished by the great author of all 
is furnished by that highest perfection of animal existence 

man himself. The inequalities of the human race are 

the more striking and numerous because of man's various 
endowments. We pause with solemn wonder at the 
versatility of the creative power when we try to call to 
mind the countless throng of human beings who have 
heretofore peopled the earth, together with its millions 
who now people it, and reflect that in mere physical con- 
formation no two were ever alike — were ever equal. But 



15 

the great inequality which marks onebranch of the human 
race from another, which distinguishes one people irom 
another, consists in those immortal parts, the intellect and 
the moral attributes which elevate their possessors to the 
social grade of angels or drag them down to the compan- 
ionship of the damned. Let us raise ourselves to the full 
conception of this question. Let us measure to some ex- 
tent at least, the inequalities which exist between the dif- 
ferent races of the earth. Let us especially determine the 
due supremacy which belongs to our own race, and thus 
vindicate the wisdom of our ancestors and the policy of 
the American Kepublie. In the light of history we see 
the Anglo-Saxon race for twenty centuries steadily asser- 
ting and maintaining its right, in the face all opposing for- 
ces, to assume the guardianship of the best and dearest 
interests of humanity. What though its origin is in the 
wild mountains of Scandinavia and amidst the dark 
Druid Oaks of Britain; yet within the breasts of that 
yellow haired, fair faced and blue eyed race were the 
germs of a greatness and a power which mocked at the 
strength of the gates of Eome, and humbled the pride of 
civilized Europe before the American continent was dis- 
covered. It arose from the fresh, untamed regions of 
Northern Europe with all the newness of life, — with the 
bounding energy of a youthful giant. The oriental races 
had played their several parts and had each contributed 
something to the slow and halting progress which the 
world was painfully making in those infant ages of history. 
The Chaldeans had watched the stars and studied the dim 
rudiments ofastromony from the hills and plains of the 
Eastern Hemisphere; the Pharaohs and Ptolmeys had 
developed a high order ot mechanism and reared the 
Pyramids, built the, temple of Memnon and carved the 
Sphynx; the Hebrew race had given warriors, statesmen, 
poets and sages to the world and had been the medium 
through which the awful presence of Deity was manifested 
on earth; the Persian hosts had swarmed over towards 
Southern Europe to subject it to the vassalage of Xerxes 
and his successors; Attila and Alaric had scourged the 



16 

nations, and sunk forever leaving nothing save the crimson 
sign of strife and battle to mark their presence on earth; 
the land of Pericles had reached its acme of fame, and 
all the great Eepublics of ancient days wherein liberty, 
science and elegant literature were supposed to dwell had 
grown to their full stature and were hastening to their 
downfall, when the tall and magnmcient forms of our re- 
mote progenitors first became visible to the eye of the an- 
nalist and the historian. The effete and worn out races 
of the East were no longer the controling agencies of 
human affairs. Their labors and their discoveries were 
scattered along the shores of time like fragments from the 
bosom of the stormy ocean, and these were left for the 
new race to ponder over, and appropriate in the enter- 
prise of regenerating the world. A second commencement 
towards the ultimate destiny of man had to be made when 
the world slowly awakened from the lethargy of the mid- 
dle ages, and the race to which you and I belong stood 
ready to assume the task. The former principal races of 
the earth existed then as they exist now, simply as the 
shrunken mementoes of their once all absorbing gran- 
deur; and the superiority which must exist somewhere 
amongst the tribes of men declared itself with the blood 
of Edward the Confessor, and Alfred the Law-giver. Since 
then, what do we behold? Shall the mock Philanthro- 
phist and spurious reformer tell, and convinee the 
enlightened world that this race of which I speak 
shall be recognized only as equal to those who have 
stood still, or whose foot prints point backwards 
toward ignorance and original barbarism? In the estab- 
lishment of governments shall the predominant race of 
the earth abjure and annihilate the eternal distinctions and 
inequalities which were decreed from the beginning of 
time between superior and inferior races? 

The entire supremacy of the Anglo Saxon race in all 
useful achievements will not be questioned by the en- 
lightened student. It has justly won this proud distinc- 
tion. Its trophies exist in every department of human 
thought and action. The wisdom ot the Chaldeans is ob^ 



17 



scure and forgotten, while the philosophic wand of New- 
ton rolled back the curtains of the Universe, and exposed 
the great arcana of its mysteries to the gaze of men as 
long as men shall exist, and matter retain its present 
form. Homer invaded the heathens' Elysium, and bor- 
rowed thence his heroes for a song of the warlike deeds 
of Ilium, but his counterpart of the sixteenth century, 
blind.sublime Milton, rose to the familiar presence of angels, 
soared with an even and unshaken wing through the ce- 
lestial world, and then turned from the daylight glories 
above, and explored the dismal vaults, and walked unhar- 
med over the burning marl of Hell. Euripides, Sophocles, 
Virgil, Horace and Juvenal dwelt upon all the chords 
of the human heart, that were then known to respond to 
the invocations of genius, but from the loins ot the 
Anglo-Saxon race, there sprang a wayward bard on the 
banks of the Avon, who has supplanted them all, and 
transcended their combined glories, who stands as the 
acknowledged high priest and interpreter of the myste- 
ries, the sorrows and joys of human nature in its loftiest 
and in its lowliest moods, and will so stand forever more. 
Socrates, Zeno, Aristotle and there disciples both in 
Greece and in Rome philosophized and laid down labori- 
ously wrought rules of moral conduct and mental pro- 
gress, but the world was startled and awakened with a 
sense of new being, and a revolution swept over the uni- 
versal mind of civilization when Francis Bacon 
launched his Novum Organvm upon the tide of time. — 
Cicero was eloquent, and immortalized the Forum and 
the Senate of Eome by his defense of the liberal principles 
of his country; Demosthenes tilled the world with the 
majestic music of the Grecian tongue ; but greater themes 
have hallowed the lips and inspired the genius of Burke, 
of Chatham, of Curran, and of Henry than ever awak- 
ened the thinking powers of classic ages.. Lycurgus and 
Solon inscribed their laws as they imagined for endless 
durability; and Justinian prepared his Pandects for uni- 
versal application; but th« Common Law of England lias 
o 



18 

proved the basis of a superstructure beneath whose 
shadow all other systems have dwarfed, and abandoned 
their hold on human affairs. Sylla and Marius, and 
Osesar, and Pompey, and other conquerors of the olden 
time without number, wrote their names with their swords 
high up on the canvass of fame, but ever since our ances- 
tors stormed the walls of the Imperial City, and climbed 
her Capitol Hill in triumph, the blood of the Tudors and 
the Plantaganets has been the steadiest, the coolest, the 
boldest and the bravest that ever joined in the shock of 
battle. The ancestry of the American citizen has 
achieved greatness and glory in every field of mental, 
moral and physical action, and it remains only for him 
to'be true to the supremacy which has alrsady been won 
and which all history concedes. 

But this Western Hemisphere, this great American con- 
tinent is the chief theatre for the display of the vast 
power and resources of the Anglo Saxon race. And as 
if there should be a fitness and a propriety in the 
chain and connection of human events, the discovery of the 
New World was made by the descendants of those North- 
ern tribes, who first desolated Southern Euroj)e, and 
then permanently peopled its most beautiful portions.— 
The ancient Castilian of Spain has the blood of the mar- 
auding Vikings in his veins; and Columbus discovered 
the land where his far away kindred should perfect the 
glory of the race. 

The early settlement of the American colonies, presents 
a sublime spectacle. A superior people, full of the wis- 
dom and experience of an advanced stage of civilization, 
taking possession of the country in the name of human 
progress, could not fail to stamp the era as one distin- 
guished in important results. Certain great laws of na- 
ture — laws born of the. will and knowledge of God himself, 
controlled the conductof the American citizen, in his first 
settlement upon this continent. An aboriginal race was 
here. A people of remote origin, and long prescriptive 
title to the soil, were in possession of all the land that lies 
between the two oceans. But the same fundamental prin- 



19 

ciple which governed the settlement of Cannan by the 
children of Israel, and which operated under the direct 
sanction of God, to exclude and exterminate, and to re- 
duce to subserviency, the various aboriginal tribes of that 
chosen spot, produced precisely the same results, when 
American colonists landed at Jamestown, and at Plymouth. 
But one race was ever designed to participate in the labors, 
the duties, and the priviliges ofone government. 1 speak 
of races distinct from each other, by their origin, their 
mentality, their moral tendencies, and with distinct refer- 
ence to their physical characteristics. 

The Indian vanished into the shades of the forest as the 
white man enlarged the boundaries of civilization. The 
law of total extermination was against him and his; and 
the decree that he should give place to the pale-faced con- 
queror was written in sole and special reference to the in- 
evitable relation which distinct and unequal races bear 
towards each other when Israel was commanded to cast 
out the " seven nations greater and mightier " than Israel 
herself; greater and mightier in numbers, wealth and ex- 
tent of possessions, but not linked to a superior and im- 
mortal destiny. The experiment of commingling the blood 
of separate races, or of combining their energies in the 
control of a single government, met the disapprobation ot 
the Almighty, and has disgracefully failed wherever it has 
been attempted. Extermination was more desirable to the 
haughty Red man than subserviency; but that the philos- 
ophy and teaching of all ages, as well as the wisdom of God 
himself, sanction and justify the existence of a dependent 
and vassal condition on the part of an inferior towards a 
superior race, Avhen the two are brought in contact, no 
well informed and impartial mind will deny. This, too, is 
a natural and inevitable result of the irreconcilable inequal- 
ities of the human race. It is founded on a principle coe- 
val with the birth of man. We cannot turn a leaf of 
history on which are written the achievements of the 
best and brightest eras of civilization without finding the 
bondman as one of its developements. I know that the 
experiment of equalizing distinct races has been and may 



20 

be made again. But compare for a moment the condition 
in all respects, and the progress of the North American Re- 
public with the sunken and degraded population, and fallen 
fortunes of the Southern portion of this hemisphere. The 
reflective mind needs but a glance. We would sicken to 
dwell long on the blighting effects of a total disregard of 
a natural, supreme law of humanity. Let those who will 
cavil at the positions which I have assumed, find the de- 
lights, the prosperity and the national glory of their sys- 
tem amidst the jarring, discordant scenes of the mongrel 
races of Mexico, Central and South America. To my mind 
it is sufficiently clear that the founders of our colonies and 
afterwards of our Federal Government, wiselyframed and 
fashioned our institutions for themselves and their poster- 
ity, and proclaimed no equality, entered into no partner- 
ship, and divided no civil rights with any other race. — 
The American citizen who superintended the early labors 
that were bestowed on the question of our liberties and 
the construction oi our Constitution, never asserted that all 
men were created equal in the sense which modern con- 
spirators against the peace of the nation attach to those 
memorable words. The withdrawal by a portion of the 
subjects of Gieat Britain from their allegiance to their 
Prince on account of heavy grievances committed against 
them, and not against their British fellow subjects, was 
the object at which our fathers aimed when that phrase 
was given by them to the world. They asserted their own 
equality to the other citizens of the British realm, and they 
appealed to arms against the unjust discriminations which 
were made against them by a corrupt Parliament and an 
imbecile King;. They did more. They asserted for them- 
selves the right to become their own rulers, and denied the 
superiority any longer of that branch of their own blood 
which they had left behind them on the Isles of Great 
Britain. They asserted their right to become their own 
noblemen, their own aristocracy and their own E.ing. — 
This was one of the species of equality which they pro- 
claimed. But looking out upon the grand future which 
was awaiting the work of their hands, they asserted still 



21 

another kind of equality which will forever be a question 
of the first magnitude with their posterity — the equality 
of American citizenship. With an eye on the Temple 
whose beautiful proportions were gradually rising, and 
remembering all the time for whom it was being construct- 
ed, they proclaimed the lawful inmate of that Temple free 
from the despotic forms of government which then dark- 
ened the whole face of the globe, and equal to all others 
whose rights were thus recognized. A reasonable and 
sensible construction of the Declaration of our Indepen- 
dence as a nation, can only be arrived at in the light of 
the circumstances which surrounded its production and 
adoption. It had reference to the causes which called it 
into existence, and the purposes it was designed to accom- 
plish. If it was intende'd as a sweeping assertion of uni- 
versal human equality it stands in the face of six thousand 
years of testimony to the contrary ; and if it was intended 
as a broad charter under which all men within the jurisdic- 
tion of its operations could claim their freedom and become 
free, then it stamps its author and its advocates as falsifiers 
of their own words, and is itself the greatest failure in the 
the history of human efforts. But if, on the contrary it 
receives its just purport, its palpable meaning as a decla- 
ration of civil rights, on behalf of those whose rights were 
invaded, and who were solemnly reclaiming them from the 
grasp of power, then it stands in harmony with the facts 
which preceded as well as those which succeeded its adop- 
tion, and should be venerated by rising generations as the 
grand enunciation of the principles of freedom which 
made us a free people. 

We have thus seen the necessity of government and the 
various shapes and phases it has assumed under the wilful 
and restless spirit of man. We have seen the eternal con- 
flict, throughout all changes and revolutions, between the 
principle of liberty and the iron force of despotism. We 
have seen the inequalities of the human race, and witnessed 
freedom choosing for her guardian and defender the superi- 
or branch of that race. We have seen the theatre of human 
greatness and national excellence transferred by slow 



22 

marches, moving as the great cycles of time move, from 
the gorgeous and luxurious plains of the ancient seats of 
Empire; from the banks of the Euphrates and the Indus, 
from the banks of the Nile, from the shores of the dark 
Euxine, from the waters of the Mediterranean, from the 
regions of the swift and arrowy Ehone and the dark roll- 
ing Danube; yea, in a powerful measure from the very 
banks of the Thames itself, to the banks of the Potomac 
and the Mississippi. And we have seen at last, a govern- 
ment here assume shape and form, founded upon the phil- 
osophic relation which exists between the different races 
that inhabit this continent ; and dedicated to the freedom 
and equality of its citizens. 

We might here, perhaps, appropriately pause and re- 
flect upon the position which that government has so 
quickly attained before the world. Strange, strange, and 
without a parallel: alone, solitary, and without a peer in 
all history., has been the career of American progress. It 
is a mystery which the tongue is too feeble, and our lan- 
guage too barren, adequately and fully, to interpret. It 
seems as fabulous as the palace of Aladdin, and yet it bears 
a moral too vast and overwhelming for human comprehen- 
sion. The statesman with his proudest j^eriods, and the 
poet with his sublimest passages, have dwelt upon the sud- 
den and brilliant promotion of the American Government 
to the foremost' rank, and, indeed, far in advance of the 
foremost rank of nations But, in the presence of the' 
great fact itself, in the presence of the living glory, all de- 
scription fails, and eulogy falls weak and baffled to the 
ground. The voice of our brief history, drowns and sti- 
fles all other voices that may b« raised in its behalf, as the 
voice of the ocean would overwhelm the song that was 
uttered in its praise on the beach. Liberty has not merely 
confered unequaled civil rights on the American citizen, 
but like Brairius of old, it has touched with a hundred 
hands, all the springs of human progress. The physical 
improvement of the country has especially obeyed its gigan- 
tic impulse. The ancient works of scientific labor, the 
Egyptian Pyramids, the Eoman Aqueducts, the Appiau 



23 

Way, and the Temple of Ephesus, sink into utter insig- 
nificance, when compared with the industrial glories of this 
young Eepublic. But however delightful it may be to the 
American to dwell upon the various developments of his 
country, yet there are other questions of vital and pressing- 
interest which more properly commend themselves to his 
consideration, at the present juncture of our affairs. Let 
us not boast so much upon what has already been done, 
but let us rather address ourselves to some of the more 
important duties of the American citizen, on the full per- 
formance of which depends the future welfare, yea, the 
very existence of the Eepublic. 

Other ages, other people, and other countries have as 
w 7 c have seen, achieved excellence of a high degree in the 
various fields of human action, but the peculiar form and 
character of the American Government stand alone, with- 
out a model in the past, the discovery and accomplishment 
of our own race, our own age, and our own country. To 
embrace many governments in one. to deal with indepen- 
dent and distinct sovereignties, and procure their accept- 
ance of a Constitution framed for their Government, in an 
associated capacity, was the delicate task which fell to the 
hands of our fathers. Similar attempts, it is true, have 
been made in the history of the world, but the American 
Union is the first confederation of States, in the annals of 
mankind where the attributes of sovereignty were allowed 
to remain in its individual members. Centralization of 
power has been the bane of every confederation of which 
history gives any account, and the brightest displays of 
learned statesmanship, which this or any other age ever 
beheld were made by the founders of this government, in 
originating and adopting the means whereby that rock of 
shipwreck and disaster might be forever avoided. Their 
success is now admitted, if the present and future citizen 
shall faithfully adhere to the doctrines then enforced and 
agreed upon by the Architects of the American Union.- - 
And the strong tendency which was displayed in the early 
history of our Government, towards an unjust absorption 



24 

of the powers of the States by the Federal Government, 
and which again discovers itself in the most odious forms, 
after an apparent slumber of years, demands of the citi- 
zen, fully to comprehend what those doctrines were. If 
this "Union, through fanaticism and licentious sectional 
hate, shall perish, shall therefore American liberty itself 
fail ? I am aware that such is the usual consequence attrib- 
uted to the destruction of this Confederacy. It may be 
true, JS^o eye can foresee the correct results of such an ap- 
palling disaster, but when the original compact of States 
shall have failed of its purpose, if fail it must, to " estab- 
lish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the 
common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure 
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, :; why 
may not the rights of freemen find sanctuaries in the sev- 
eral States? They were the first Governments oi this 
country, and delegated but never surrendered beyond the 
power of reclamation, certain of their own powers, duly 
and carefully specified tothe Federal Government in trust; 
and to be exercised strictly, in obedience to that sacred 
deed of trust — the Constitution. Who shall say when the 
trustee becomes unfaithful, and all the methods recognized 
in the different departments of the Government, have been 
exhausted in vain, to compel the performance of the con- 
ditions on which the trust was created, that each State of 
this Union may not reinvest itself with all its original 
rights, privileges and powers? This double chance for 
the American citizen to perpetuate his freedom, is the 
chief glory and crowning virtue of our complex, and at 
the same time, simple and beautiful system of Government. 
If the force of numbers, inflamed by the wicked and heret- 
ical spirit of aggression upon established, constitutional 
rights, should ever strike down any one or more of these 
States, by the usurped authority of the General Govern- 
ment, then it remains for such States themselves to lift up 
and reinstate fallen liberty. Deny this right to the State 
and you destroy its boasted sovereignty, and open up the 
road to a tyranny, guided by prejudice and passion, more 
galling to its victims and more destructive of their happi- 



25 

ness, than the hand of a sanguinary despot ever inflicted. 
This is no new principle that I am asserting; it is not for 
its novelty, that I advance it here, but it involves rights of 
such magnitude to the citizen; rights strenuously ques- 
tioned by a large class of evil spirits, who now surround 
the political cauldron, and invoke a charm of direful im- 
port to the Eepublic, that it should be more boldly and 
firmly advanced now than ever before. The struggles of 
freedom, the advancement of the liberal arts, the develope- 
ment and supremacy of the Anglo Saxon race, the settle- 
ment of the American colonies, their resistance to the de- 
mands of George III, the wisdom of the early patriots 
who discovered anew and mighty science of human gov- 
ernment, all, all are in vain, if legal rights may be destroy- 
ed, and sacred privileges invaded, — the bond of our Union, 
perverted, in these latter days, into an instrument of tor- 
ture and degradation; if these things may happen, and 
all in the name of liberty and equality, and there be no 
lawful mode to arrest evils so monstrous. But the Ameri- 
can citizen is not left helpless and without resources in the 
face of such sad contingencies, which, alas ! may be hov- 
ering nearer the present crisis of public affairs than the 
hopeful lover of his country is willing to realize. He looks 
to the doctrine of the rights of the States and invokes the 
name and memory of Jefferson, who declared the inde- 
pendence of the people, and taught them how to maintain 
it from the insidious assaults of sedition and treason, as 
well as from open enemies. 

State Equality is a necessary accompaniment of State 
Sovereignty. That each State of this Union affords its 
citizens an absolute equality in every respect, under the 
American Constitution with the citizens of every other 
State is a fact founded upon the spirit of justice which con- 
trolled the foundation of this confederacy. This kind of 
equality is an especial object of assault in these days of 
degenerate patriotism. The greedy avarice and insatiate 
demands of the descendants of a bigoted and speculating 
class now seek to absorb the right to think, the right 10 
act, and the right to possess and enjoy, for, and in the place 



26 

of, and to the exclusion of all who exist outside of their 
malignant circle. This fact constitutes the paramount evil 
of the hour. These arrogant assumptions must be rebuked, 
crushed and destroyed or this Union is no longer a 
Union, and will perish as a wonderful evidence of what 
genius and patriotism can create, and what the restless and 
corrupt fanaticism of man can destroy. This Union was 
founded upon the principle that each member was its own 
domestic ruler and that its neighbor should neither seek 
to unsettle its domestic institutions or strive to cast a 
blight and a mildew over its reputation by becoming a 
common slanderer before the world. On the land, in the 
broad Territories, on the high seas and wherever Ameri- 
can citizens may rightfully go, there goes also an absolute 
equality in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property. — 
The citizen of South Carolina may meet the citizen of New 
York, the citizen of Indiana may meet the citizen of Vir- 
ginia, the citizen of Florida ma3 T meet the citizen of Maine, 
but who dares assert that they do not meet as equals in 
the eye of that Constitution which was made as much for 
the one as for the other. Shall that school of false philos- 
ophy and spurious statesmanship which upholds univer- 
sal human equality deny the equality of the citizenship of 
the Republic? 

Recent Legislation, and attempted Legislation as well as 
the wide spread promulgation of the most dangerous dog- 
mas give great significance to this question. It embraces 
the whole theory from which American citizenship derives 
its value. It goes farther. It involves, as a living, vital 
issue now upon us, the continuation of our present form 
of G-overument. The proud heart wherever it beats recoils 
with horror, or rather swells with indignant emotion at 
the thought that the star of the State whose pride and 
honor is its own, shall ever grow dim and blaze with an 
inferior and unequal lustre to the stars which signalize the 
other States on the flag of the Union. If such a degra- 
dation could have been foreseen, what State would have 
hazarded its honorable existence and tempted its melan- 
choly fate by joining the compact and signing the cove* 



27 

nants of the Constitution? Not one. If some sage witl 
the gift of second sight could have risen on the floor of the 
Convention, whose labors developed the American Con 
stitution and there announced, as a vision, which less thai 
a century would make real, that a party pretending pa 
triotism would organize itself upon the doctrine of tin 
inequality of the States, would proclaim the chief end of po 
litieal labor to be the discrimination through the powei 
of the Federal Government against the vested, legal rights 
of a. section; if such an announcement had been made am 
its truth foreseen, the American Union would never have 
had a place in history. The Convention would have ad- 
journed without day, and its delegates returned to their 
States, there to establish liberty exposed to no such fuuire 
calamity and curse. Yet that curse is already upon us, 
and one of the duties of the American citizen is to study 
its nature fully, and if possible avoid its manifest purpose. 
I shall not here invade the arena of political discussion, 
1 shall not advance the views of the partisan ; but the gen- 
eral principles which affect a nation's welfare, and the vic- 
ious results of diseased opinions which assail the funda- 
mental laws and virtues of a free people are not unwor- 
thy of mention on the most solemn and exalted occasions. 
No interest that appertains merely to earth is of such sub- 
lime consequence to the American as the maintainance o± 
his birth-right in the equal enjoyment of legal liberty. I 
shall endeavor to point out the chief danger to that birth 
right and the arch enemy to that sacred enjoyment. The 
rapid growth of the country, the increasing avenues to 
wealth and promotion, the vast number of. internal and 
external questions of policy, the political revolutions which 
sw x eep over the nation, presenting endless and overwhel- 
mino- temptations to call forth the worst passions of men, 
have all combined to beget that most dangerous and re- 
volting pest to human society and foe to public peace and 
virtue — the seditious citizen. Within that phrase is em- 
braced the nature of the evil with which the friends of the 
American Union arc now assailed. No open violence yet 
grasps at unlawful pow T er, no Caesar has crossed the Bubi- 



28 

con, but the air grows dark with the elements of sedition, 
and a vast conspiracy is gathering force to usurp the seats 
of power at the Capitol over the torn and dishonored frag- 
ments of the Constitution. The seditious citizen glories in 
the billows of popular fanaticism which roar around him 
and rejoices in sight of the fatal leeshore on which the 
Union is drifting. ~No cry of horror escapes his lip. He 
rather jeers at the warning voice of others. He seeks 
with insane fury to grasp with his own hand the helm of 
the vessel to hurl her more swiftly and surely on de- 
struction. He professes to mock at calamity, and laugh 
at fear. It would be the first and most natural supposi- 
tion of a patriot's heart that such a citizen would sink 
down, a powerless and despised victim to public scorn. 

"But in seditions bad men rise to honor/' 
and what was written of the days of Cleon and 
Alcibiades is made true in American history. Instead 
of ostracism, not the ostracism of the shell, for its 
banishments fell on a worthier class, but the ostracism 
of strong contempt and abhorrence, we see the seditious 
citizen receive the senatorial robe, and from that high 
and once sacred eminence, we hear him vex the ear of 
the nation. He is not satisfied with his government. He 
clamors for change. He does not boldly proclaim the 
necessity of revolution or amendment to the Constitu- 
tion. That would be too manly for his character. He 
prefers to plunder his fellow citizens of their rights, by 
false constructions and cowardly evasions. He is not con- 
tent, that peace and fraternal affection should remain an 
undisturbed inheritance to the descendants of those who 
laid the foundations of the Union, in love with one anoth- 
er. But in the paths of danger, or probable combat he 
never ventures. He is content to incite the deluded de- 
sciples of his creed, to follow its logical and inevitable re- 
sults to the extent of blood, and civil war, but that is not 
the part of the drama of sedition in which he personally 
appears. In order to establish unkind relations between 
different sections, and foster jealousy and vindictive 
rivalry between kindred blood, he prostitutes his time in 



29 

the base and ignoble pursuit of materials on which to 
found systematic and elaborate calumny. The slander of 
states of historic renown, and unimpeached devotion to 
the laws, he rolls as a sweet morsel, beneath his tongue. He 
is eminently gifted with that quality which would drag 
angels down, not that he has the power or even the de- 
sire to soar into their places, but he grows pale in the 
envy of superior excellence, and delights in the abase- 
ment of virtue. Not satisfied with calumniating states, 
and denying their equality, he reviles statesmen of spot- 
less integrity, and approved wisdom, and seeks to impair 
their usefulness, by casting a blight over their fame. Nor 
do the dead escape his fangs. He preys with accursed 
avidity on those great and good names, whose possession 
is the nation's truest wealth and brightest glory. He 
drags them from their dread abode, and consumes the 
night and wastes the day in torturing their virtues into 
frailties for an indecent exhibition. Miltiades died with- 
in a year after the battle of Marathon, of a gangrened 
wound, and in a prison where his ungrateful countrymen 
had placed him, but the seditious citizen of the United 
States, in the august assemblage of Senators, declares 
Washington a pirate, in the practices of his domestic life, 
Madison a barbarian, Jackson, Clay and Calhoun robbers, 
and foes to christian civilization. Ingratitude and injus- 
tice to the living is nn evil sufficiently deplorable but 
the willful slander of the dead is the lowest depth of 
baseness to which the mind of a dastard can descend. 
If the seditious citizen visits foreign lands, he goes not as 
the generous patriot, whose home-sick heart bounds with 
proud emotion when he sees the ample folds of the flag 
of his country floating in undiminished splendor. He 
goes rather as the carping detainer of American institu- 
tions, and wins his way to the ante-chambers of Despo- 
tism, by pronouncing American freedom a failure. 
He ransacks ancient libraries and burrow r s amongst 
the curiosities of literature, to find strange materials with 
which to embelish and adorn a malicious libel against 
the land that gave him birth. He digs up the forgotten 







opinions of men no wiser than himself, and flaunts them 
in the face of thy world, as the conclusive evidences of 
truth. And to what end is all this? For what purpose 
are all these labors? There is but one answer. To create 
sectional enmity, to beget animosity, to degrade the 
citizens of one section of tins government m the eyes 
of the citizens of another section, and thus destroy that 
sense of American equality, which alone can preserve 
the Union of the States, are the mournful and calamitous 
objects on which the seditious citizen fastens all the pow- 
ers of his will, and toward which he summons all his 
energies and intellectual resources. His chief delight and 
the most gratifying consequence of his labors, is to embroil 
in sanguinary strife, the brethren of one race, one lan- 
guage and one worship. History has given over to an 
infamous immortality, the names ot a tew citizens of 
Jerusalem who played the same part in the hour when 
dangers of mortal extremity assailed the city of David. 
When Titus environed the city with the deep squadrons 
and long drawn out legions of Borne, when the walls 
were broken day by day, when famine, gaunt and fright- 
ful sent its devouring pangs amidst the beleaguered hosts 
within, when the dead la} T piled upon the dead, and the 
holy rites of sepulture were abandoned, when fire burst 
from the gaping earth, when unearthly sounds were 
heard, and unearthly visitations experienced, when the 
Jew and the Roman stood still and paused by mutual 
consent, in their work of slaughter, to gaze in awful 
amazement at fiery squadrons charging each other- m the 
clear vaults of Heaven above them, when the doom of the 
Jewish nation, and the fulfillment of prophecy were beto- 
kened with marvelous certainty, yet, in the midst of all 
this, the seditious citizen traversed the streets, usurped 
the places of authority and inflamed a bitter warfare, re- 
volting" scenes of carnage, between tribes of the same 
covenant, exposed to the same destiny. The historian of 
remote periods when carefully coll-ecting the materials 
for the history of the present age of the American Re- 
public, will preserve its seditious citizen as a species of 



the same God -defying madness, — the same shocking speci- 
men of a cruel, and insane fanaticism. Though dangers 
environ the Union, and encompass the Constitution on 
all sides, though the laws are broken down, and scorned 
beneath the foot of the traitor, though brother lias lifted 
his hand against brother, though society itself, is menaced 
with violent disruption, though "the custom of fell deeds" 
seems prevalent, though "Domestic fury, and fierce civil 
strife'' threaten to pervade all the confines of this hither- 
to happy country* ; yet with a felons voice we hear him 
invoking more and more the bitterness and sectionalism 
which have already produced this startling condition of 
public affairs. In the name of liberty France was smic- 
ten with a curse, and Arnold called upon her name to jus- 
tify him in his infamy, but the seditious citizen of the 
American Government of the present clay, with the same 
sweet sound on his polluted tongue, seeks to inaugurate 
scenes of deeper horror than those through which Madame 
.Roland, passed to the scaffold; and to perpetrate a treason 
in comparison with which the treason of Arnold would 
become common place and insignificant. We are told tbat 
the Ancient God Ixion, in seeking the embraces of Juno 
embraced a cloud, and from this unnatural embrace the 
Centaurs sprang in their malice and their deformity. We 
see something similar in this practical age without seek- 
ing it in the pages of Grecian Mythology. The seditious 
American citizen who holds public station, embraces a 
corrupt and stormy fanaticism, and a brood of frightful 
and depraved theories and revolting actions instantly 
spring up, and 

"W ith wide Oerberian mouths full loud" 
harrass and shock the patriotism of the country. 

And against the evil tendencies of the present hour what 
have we to oppose? What is our remedy for principles 
more pernicious than the plague? Where is the patriots 
house of refuge? Reason, argument and peaceful remon- 
strance are thrown away upon the authors of sedition. — 
We can appeal to the patriotism of the country, to the 



32 

popular sense of justice, to the law-abiding spirit of the 
citizen who loves the institutions of his fathers. We can 
hold up to our countrymen the sacred Constitution, hal- 
lowed by the sublime reminiscences of the past and gath- 
ering increased glory and consequence in view of the ap- 
proaching future. We can point them to the rents which 
the thrusts of seditious citizens have made in that holy 
instrument, and appeal to the lovers of their country 
wherever they may be to revenge the desecration. We 
can oppose wise counsels to the ravings of fanaticism, and 
brotherly love to sectional strife. We can appeal to the 
American citizen to allow the house which his fathers 
built to stand forever — that though divided it may be in 
its domestic economy, yet it is not divided unto its fall. — 
We can do all this and we can hope that our labors will 
bring forth the fruits of peace. But if the evil hour must 
come, if patriotism is to be humiliated and treason exalted, 
if the schemes of the seditious citizen are to triumph and 
civil strife and commotion are to cumber this fair land, 
then may some Brutus avenge the cause of liberty in the 
Capitol ; and may the authors of our ruin be the first to 
sup full of its horrors! 

But we will turn away from this gloomy theme and re- 
fresh ourselves with more pleasing pictures. It, in the 
wisdom and mercy of Divine Providence, this government 
is permitted to survive the baleful principles of the pres- 
ent crisis, serene skies and a peaceful calm await us in the 
future. The patriot will take hope and the conspirator 
will shrink away baffled, into an odious oblivion. Good 
omens will cheer us and the Anglo-Saxon race will rush 
forward again on the bright track of American progress. 

The expansion of the Eepublic is a natural law of its 
healthy existence. That principle is now paramount to 
all other questions of national policy which remain to be 
developed, except the question of the preservation of the 
Union itself. In the past it has steadily met the require- 
.ments of the age, but the future of this government, if it 
shall happily have a future, is to be one wide theatre of 



33 

expansion. Opposition has always stood in the way of 
this doctrine but we have only to look at the map of the 
United States to vindicate it in its former practical re* 
salts. But for that construction of the Constitution which 
gave to it its expansive force, this hour the very heart and 
central portion of our confederacy, the spot where Saint 
Louis sits, the commercial queen of the mighty west, the 
Mississippi and its western and southern tributaries ; 
Florida and the borders of the Gulf of Mexico, New Or- 
leans with its floating palaces freighted with the staple 
articles which link together the commerce of two worlds, 
San Francisco and California, the city and State of magi- 
cal, golden growth, would all be in the possession of for- 
eign powers, owned by foreign governments, and gov- 
erned by the bayonets of Europe. Who would now tear 
out the chapters of our history which record these territo- 
rial acqusitions? But if this Union shall escape its perils, 
if the Constitution shall survive its enemies our future will 
be to our past as is the meridian sun to the gray strug- 
gling dawn of the morning. There is a destiny in the 
pathway of this Union such as the eye of man never be- 
held nor the heart of man conceived. Allowing no more 
than that this young government shall double its present 
lifetime, and what a future rises before the mind ! "Who 
shall paint the Eepublic of that period? Who shall speak 
of its commerce and number its ships that go down to the 
sea? Who shall portray its cities — its Tyres, its Sidons, its 
Carthages and its Eomes? Who shall count their wealth 
and image forth in this age the splendors that shall await 
on that? Who shall attempt to reckon the myriads that 
shall then inhabit our plains, our valleys and our moun- 
tains? Who shall foretell the improvements of science and 
the triumphs of man over the world of nature around him? 
Who will take the map now and draw the boundaries of 
this Eepublic when age shall have given it the full stature 
of vigorous manhood? 

But we will wait for no distant future to accomplish 
much of that destiny which I have suggested. It is now 

3 
.Iff 



34 

rising and becoming visible to the eyes of the present 
generation. The expansive principle of this government 
has hitherto mainly followed the track of the sun into the 
imperial possession of the West, but it is now wooed into 
the embrace of softer climes and more fruitful fields. The 
South, the South, the South shall henceforth be the watch- 
word of American expansion. The law of political grav- 
itation points in that direction and the South herself 
should not lose the golden o importunity which the spirit of 
the age holds out to her. The whole patriotism of the 
country responds to the course of manifest destiny. I 
speak not Of that manifest destiny which moves without 
law, but of that which is to be achieved by law. The 
spirit of American liberty and American progress is 
abroad ivpon the waters of the G-ulf of Mexico and Spanish 
Tyranny is trembling in its presence. This spirit has 
touched the shores of Cuba and will never be driven from 
her soil until the wisdom of American statesmanship has 
achieved her acquisition. This question has arisen in the 
pathway of progress and we cannot ignore or go round it. 
It must and will be met in a practical form. The day for 
argument is past and gone. The whole civilized world 
beholds, though it may not acknowledge, the right and 
the national necessity which exists on the part of the 
American government to the ownership of the Key to the 
Gulf. Action, action, lawful but unyielding action should 
now characterize the policy of the American citizen in his 
relation to that glorious, though oppressed Island. 

But, is this all? Are there no other concerns of vast 
national import under the south western horizon? Ah 1 
what giant events are there awaiting the rrpening process 
of a few eventful years. In vain, we may turn our faces 
from them or shut our eyes to the shadows which they 
cast before in their coming. In vain, too, will be open 
opposition to their approach. The greatest acts in the 
drama of American developement are yet to come, and the 
curtain will as surely rise upon them, as years come and 
go. with the changing seasons. Look to Mexico! Lost, 
fallen, dissevered, bleeding at every pore, the prey of 



• 35 

domestic assassins, the sport of bloody handed factions, 
her neck beneath the heel of alternate beggarly usurpers, 
her fields drenched with the blood of her own veins; 
chained to the rock of semi-barbarism with the links of 
Despotism festering in her flesh, like the links of the lame 
Lemnian, and the Promethean vulture of civil war, forever 
consuming her vitals. Her experiment of government in 
every form has proved a failure. Instead of peace, order 
and happiness to the citizen, misrule, like the Destroying " 
Angel, fills all her borders with desolation and death. This 
condition of aff&irs cannot last. There is no corner of the 
earth, where the Anglo-Saxon blood has penetrated, dark 
enough for such scenes to have a long duration. Much 
less will they continue their ghastly round within the 
immediate sphere of American influence, and American 
advancement. Step by step we have approached, in the 
past history of the country, the attitude which we now 
sustain towards Mexico. It has not been sought, neither 
could it have been avoided. The onward march of human 
affairs, the tendency of the American mind in that direc- 
tion, the philosophy of political motion, the irresistible 
superiority of the Anglo-Saxon blood, have all conspired 
to bring this Government to look upon the destiny of Mexico 
as linked to her own. There are those within the hearing 
of my voice, many, I doubt not, who will witness the 
joining of those destinies in one, and will behold the land 
of the Aztecs carved into American States. Examine 
your maps, commence at the mouth of the Rio Grande, 
trace along down through the waters of the Bay of Vera 
Cruz, around that high headland of Yucatan, down through 
the Carribean Sea, across the Tropic of Cancer into the 
Gulf of Darien; cross the Isthmus there, into the Gulf of 
Panama, follow up the Pacific coast through twenty two 
degrees of Latitude to the boundary line of the Treaty 
of 1854, and all within those limits, is fastened to the 
interests and wrapped up in the Destiny of American 
Institutions by the great God, whose hand shapes the 
continents of the earth, and scoops out its Oceans, Gulfs 
and Harbors. The great law of self defense and national 



96 • 

security, a law of nations paramount to all other laws, calls 
imperatively for the practical recognition of this fact in the 
Diplomacy and Legislation of the Government. The 
waters of the Gulf of Mexico, on its Northern and Eastern 
coast, now wash the borders of five States of this Union, 
and its tide rises to the wharf of the commercial Metropolis 
of the South. Over on the opposite side lie the distracted 
States of Mexico, and lower down, those of Central America. 
They would constitute an easy acquisition to any Euro- 
pean power with sufficient boldness to defy the Monroe 
policy of this Government, and from that line of coast, the 
hostile armaments of all Europe could be equipped in sight 
of American soil. If the American Union shall be pre- 
served, its wisest Statesmen will be the first to look steadily 
and boldly to these facts, and to shape the policy of the 
nation towards its lawful and inevitable expansion. 

Gentlemen of the Societies or Washington and 
Jefferson. — You are surrounded to-day by no ordinary 
circumstances. An epoch in the history of liberty has 
been reached which will be forever memorable in the 
annals of coming time. As you leave these venerable 
walls and start out to meet life with its rugged issues, the 
great and imperious question of the hour which will first 
salute you will be the preservation of that constitutional 
liberty which the fathers of the Kepublic provided for the 
enjoyment of their posterity ; and second to that will be 
the consideration of that destiny which awaits the Anglo- 
Saxon race on this continent. You are born to a mighty 
responsibility as well as to a rich inheritance. You spring 
from a race unto whom is given dominion, power and 
exaltation over the other races of the earth. The blood 
of a conquering, governing race is in your veins and brings 
with it the responsibility which attaches to the leadership 
in the concerns of Earth's supremest moment. You are 
of the lineage of Washington, who led the army of Inde- 
pendence, whose great heart resisted the appalling ad- 
versities of the Eevolution, who stood upon the banks of 
the Delaware and above the roar of the elements heard 
the call of patriotic duty, who led his little column to the 



37 

mouth of the cannon at Trenton, who led the feeble colo- 
nies, like Moses at the head of the Tribes in the "wilder- 
ness, but who more favored than the great captain of Is- 
rael, was permitted from the plains of York Town to enter 
into the possession of liberty; who stands now and will 
stand forever as a sublime and unapproachable example of 
virtue, and love of country. He was born in the coun- 
ty of Westmoreland and in the State of Virginia, but the 
whole Anglo Saxon race from all the four quarters of the 
G-lobe points to his matchless life as an evidence of its 
superiority, and humanity itself assumes new dignity be- 
cause the name of Washington has been written in her re- 
cords. You are of the same lineage too of the great phil- 
osopher of liberty, of Thomas Jefferson, who studied the 
principles of government as he did the eternal truths of 
science, who loved freedom in an excess ef devotion, who 
drafted the fundamental doctrines of our national existence, 
who foresaw more clearly than any other statesman of 
that day the grandeur of the future upon which American 
institutions were advancing, who laid aside the robes of 
office more honorable than the imperial purple and turned 
to the genial pursuit of letters, laid these foundations 
where we stand, and entitled himself to the epitaph which 
marks the grave of the author of the Declaration of civil 
and religious freedom and the patron of learning in the 
western world. To your hands, in common with the young 
generation to which you belong, will soon be committed 
the interests which were bequeathed to you by the patri- 
ots and sages of American antiquity. Each one of you 
will assume ere long the high and responsible character 
of an American citizen, active in the varied scenes which 
now chequer the public affairs of the nation. You will 
never, however, forget your birth right, the pure blood of 
your ancestors, nor the destiny which awaits the Ameri- 
can Union preserved in its justice and in its equality. — 
Nor will you ever forget the loyal influences of this great 
State on whose bosom you have reposed while here drink- 
ing in inspiring draughts, from her crystal fountain of 
learning. Virginia teaches no doubtful lesson on the sub- 



38 

ject ol her devotion to the Constitution and the Union. — 
Happy are they who sit at her feet and learn wisdom 
from her precepts! She is rich in historical renown. She 
rocked the cradle of the Union and defended the infant 
Hercules from the grasp of the Serpent. Within her bo- 
som repose the ashes of those most illustrious in the 
cause of liberty since the song of Miriam arose as a song of 
deliverance on the banks oftheEed Sea. The curious 
traveler threads his way amongst the tombs of Westmin- 
ister Abbey and on either hand sleep Kings, conquerors, 
princes, poets, statesmen, historians and philosophers. In 
that solemn pile genius rests from its brilliant triumphs 
and its exquisite sorrows, and eloquence and learning hal- 
low the spot with the glory of intellectual excellence. But 
the modest eminence of Mount Vernon, and the quiet 
heights of Montieello contain more precious dust than 
was ever treasured away in the "storied urn" of human 
greatness or the royal sepulchre of Kings. The soil of 
this ancient and revered commonwealth is rich with the 
shrines of the mighty. Her children have been the tall 
spirits of the earth, and every valley and every mountain 
is full of thrilling memories. The drama of the Revolu- 
tion closed within her borders. The spirit of American 
liberty here first took assurance of safety, and a perma- 
nent existence. But the historian who records the vari- 
ous and exalted glories of Virginia will find in her loyal- 
ty and devotion to the Union and the Constitution as it 
now is, something of more priceless value, a jew T el of 
more radiant lustre, than any of the historical glories with 
which she is so richly decorated. Whatever hereafter may 
be the policy reluctantly adopted by Virginia, r.o one can 
charge her with a willing and ready desertion of the 
established order of things. A wonderful scene is presen- 
ted to us as we look back on the strange events which 
have recently convulsed the nation. Sedition sent an arm- 
ed force against her border. Fanaticism sought to give 
the flesh of her citizens a prey to the eagles, and her 
houses to the torch of the incendiary. Murder was inau- 
gurated as a virtue on her soil, and her domestic insti- 



39 

tuitions were assailed with a sectional hate which re- 
joiced in the prospect of a carnival of blood. The 
barriers ot State sovereignty and the safeguards of 
State equality were broken down at the behests of 
the seditions citizen. The mother of States and of 
Statesmen was the first to feel the unnatural and ungrate- 
ful blow of a monstrous conspiracy against the Constitu- 
tion. In that hoar of bitterness, in that day of her ca- 
lamity, when her wrongs were fresh, and her wounds were 
bleeding, the messenger of a new Union, the bearer of 
despatches from a sister State of the South, came to Vir- 
ginia, and tempted her in the moment of her severest 
temptation, in the very wilderness of her sufferings, to 
abandon the temple of her ancient worship. It was true 
that the old Union of the Fathers had not afforded her 
protection against criminal outrage. It was true that war 
had been proclaimed against her by the consistent fol- 
lowers of a prevalent sectional fanaticism. It was true 
that the equality of American citizenship was stricken 
down on the soil which gave it birth. But remembering 
her early struggles and sacrifices, calling to mind the 
precious memories which bind her to the American Union, 
yearning for the return of fraternal harmony and hoping 
all things, Virginia turned her back on the Tempter to 
Disunion, and announced her determination to appeal 
once more to the holy spirit of justice and peace which 
has not finally taken its flight from the country. This 
proud act of magnanimous forbearance will never grow 
dim. It will be treasured up and recalled to the honor of 
this illustrious commonwealth through every vicissitude of 
her fortunes. The full measure of her duty has been per- 
formed, and the blood of disunion can never be found on 
her skirts. Ma} 7 each State profit by her example! May 
her wise precepts govern the public mind as in the days of 
Madison and Henry ! May Union never be destroyed, 
but in any event and under all circumstances may the 
American citizen be true to his race, and true to liberty 
as it is recognized in the American Constitution ! 



LB JL '05 



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